BioWorld International Correspondent

JERUSALEM, Israel - Compugen Ltd. announced last week the availability of the Gencarta database on the web, at the Drug Discovery and Technology conference in Boston.

Earlier, Tel Aviv-based Compugen announced the extended collaborative agreement, begun in late 1998, with U.S. drug giant Pfizer Inc. Financial details of the extension were not disclosed, but estimates range up to several hundred thousand dollars in annual income. Compugen also has partnerships with Novartis Pharma AG, of Basel, Switzerland, and Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Cambridge, Mass.

Compugen CEO Mor Amitai said that under the original agreement with Pfizer, Compugen received millions of dollars a year. The continuation agreement provides Pfizer with LEADS, Compugen's computational biology platform for drug discovery, along with Z4000 and Z3, 2-D gel analysis software packages for advanced proteomic analysis.

However, the extension did not prevent the departure of three directors. Amos Goren and Philip Young resigned and founder Eli Mintz will not be standing for re-election to the board. Business and science are not always in sync, said one Israeli analyst, referring to Compugen's lowered second-quarter 2002 revenues of $2.8 million, down from $2.9 million in the corresponding period in 2001, including extensive research and development grants.